Game Backpack December 1, 2008

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Here’s a tip I learned at our council’s 2005 Pow Wow, that I wanted to pass along. One of the areas I’ve struggled with is games, so I took the Pow Wow class on games to help me with this area. Before this, I would spend all my time working on the den meeting plan, and I’d often forget to plan a game for the meeting. The results of that class were not life-changing, but they were den-changing. The class helped me rethink my approach to games. Games help liven up a den meeting and get the boys excited to come to the den meeting. I learned to plan my den meeting around a game, instead of planning a game for a den meeting.

One of the teacher’s suggestion was to keep a game backpack. It’s a backpack filled with various items for quick game ideas. As you can see from the picture, which has some of the contents of my backpack, there’s a lot of things that can be turned into games. Among the contents are balls, balloons, note cards, spoons, sticks, ropes, game tokens, dice, and a really old cell phone (which I love – and it always gets a laugh). So now even if I don’t have time to research a game, I have one at hand. We can do a spoon and ping pong ball relay. We can do a game where you pass the balloon along without using your hands. We have bean bags that we can use for a bean bag toss. We have a great giant cell phone to play Guess Who’s Calling. And of course a notepad and pencil to keep score, or use for a quick game of hang-man. I don’t even have a game in mind for some of the items. But in a pinch, you can make a game out of almost anything.

Not only does this help at den meetings, it’s great for outings as well. Now if we are out and we have to wait in line for something, I can pull out something from the backpack and pass the time, without the boys getting rowdy! I carry this everywhere we go, because you never know when you are going to have some downtime and need a diversion.